y than any lover of my
race tasted before. The ache at the heart of the intensest love is the
impotence of words to make it perfectly understood to its object. But my
passion was without this pang, for my heart was absolutely open to her I
loved. Lovers may imagine, but I cannot describe, the ecstatic thrill
of communion into which this consciousness transformed every tender
emotion. As I considered what mutual love must be where both parties are
mind-readers, I realized the high communion which my sweet companion had
sacrificed for me.

She might indeed comprehend her lover and his love for her, but the
higher satisfaction of knowing that she was comprehended by him and her
love understood, she had foregone. For that I should ever attain the
power of mind-reading was out of the question, the faculty never having
been developed in a single lifetime.

Why my inability should move my dear companion to such depths of pity
I was not able fully to understand until I learned that mind-reading is
chiefly held desirable, not for the knowledge of others which it gives
its possessors, but for the self-knowledge which is its reflex effect.
Of all they see in the minds of others, that which concerns them most is
the reflection of themselves, the photographs of their own characters.
The most obvious consequence of the self-knowledge thus forced upon them
is to render them alike incapable of self-conceit or self-depreciation.
Every one must needs always think of himself as he is, being no more
able to do otherwise than is a man in a hall of mirrors to cherish
delusions as to his personal appearance.

But self-knowledge means to the mind-readers much more than this,--
nothing less, indeed, than a shifting of the sense of identity. When a
man sees himself in a mirror, he is compelled to distinguish between the
bodily self he sees and his real self, which is within and unseen. When
in turn the mind-reader comes to see the mental and moral self reflected
in other minds as in mirrors, the same thing happens. He is compelled
to distinguish between this mental and moral self which has been made
objective to him, and can be contemplated by him as impartially as if
it were another's, from the inner ego which still remains subjective,
unseen, and indefinable. In this inner ego the mind-readers recognize
the essential identity and being, the noumenal self, the core of the
soul, and the true hiding of its eternal life, to which the mind as wel